Dialogue

The NFM Choir from Wrocław juxtaposes Penderecki with French composers, creating a dialogue between 20th-century Polish and French music, and between the singers from Wrocław, the choir's home, and its French conductor Lionel Sow, who has been in office since 2021. The program begins with Krzysztof Penderecki's *Le Chant des chérubins*, a piece composed in 1986 based on a text from the Orthodox liturgy. This is followed by a composition by the French composer Yves Daniel-Lesur, a twelve-part *Cantique des Cantiques* from 1953. With his *Stabat Mater*, completed in 1962, Penderecki resisted both the communist system and its deeply rooted atheism, as well as the Western avant-garde circles that were likewise uninterested in the sacred. We leap into the 2000s with *Nigra sum* by composer and mezzo-soprano Caroline Marçot, who is deeply passionate about Renaissance music. Simplicity and a contemplative form connect Poulenc’s *Salve Regina* from 1941 and Penderecki’s *Agnus Dei*, written forty years later. Both elements are also found in Olivier Messiaen’s *O sacrum convivium* from 1937.